Well with banks like this, who needs enemies. You may or may not be aware of the deal Walgreens made with Boots in the UK a while back but they somewhat own that retail drug store business with an option at one point down the road to buy it all. We all should know about Tax Havens and of course this is a re-location that would be a “legal” tax haven type of move to save paying taxes in the United States. I swear I just keep watching this over and over and wonder when anyone is going to step in here and work out some kind of a solution. Companies and banks all make their big money here in the US and the big tech and pharma folks use the Big 4 US accounting agencies to set them up with a tax haven. Back at the ranch Walgreens is suing it’s competitors for software licensing now too..what a busy company it is.

As far as their data selling business where they scrape and sell us to anyone with money, that is growing and a couple years ago it was bringing in about 1 billion a year and could be closer to 2 billion now as there’s more scraping and data selling go on now than ever and there’s more flaws showing up as well. It’s the best deal in the world as far as profitability as when there’s errors, they have free labor force to follow up and do the leg work to fix it..and that would be us because we get screwed for denied access to something until “their” errors are fixed and in the meantime they’ve long put the money in the bank.

Maybe Walgreens can talk Goldman with them (grin) and that was satire as we know Goldman is already there but not as their headquarters. How about all these other companies in the US that pay their taxes here that do business with Walgreens? How do they feel about this? This is greed straight out forward.

“In a note last month, analysts at UBS said Walgreens’ tax rate was expected to be 37.5 per cent compared with 20 per cent for Boots, and that an inversion could increase earnings per share by 75 per cent.”

So far Walgreens is hesitant as they see some potential political issues and I think they are right with that perception. The old banker boys though, they don’t care, “we want more money”…look what these tech companies are doing…and now they want to scrape and sell more of your data too?

Goldman Sachs seems to have some strange resemblance to the “Honey Badger”does it not, even eats snakes… “Honey Badger Don’t Care”….here’s the show…”it’s pretty bad ass”..

And once the money gets to the UK…well listen to what the folks over there have to say about the money they lose so with headquarters in the UK, does this make it easier to gradually move over to the Dutch Sandwich Haven or one of the Cayman Havens ? Here’s a trailer on how the folks in England too are outraged with Tax Havens…I have a US documentary at this post and you can also see it with the collection of videos at the Algo Duping/Killer Algorithm page. BD

Walgreens has come under pressure from an influential group of its shareholders, who want the US pharmacy chain to consider relocating to Europe, in what would be one of the largest tax inversions ever attempted.

At a private meeting in Paris on Friday, investors owning close to 5 per cent of Walgreens’ shares lobbied the company’s management to use its $16bn takeover of Swiss-based Alliance Boots to re-domicile its tax base.

The investor group, which included Goldman Sachs Investment Partners and hedge funds Jana Partners, Corvex and Och-Ziff, requested the meeting after becoming frustrated by Walgreens’ refusal to consider relocating, according to people familiar with the matter.

Existing rules mean that a US company can forgo its domestic tax status through a deal that transfers more than 20 per cent of its shares to foreign owners.

A tax inversion by Walgreens would be likely to face strong political resistance in the US, where the practice has become increasingly popular during the past two years, particularly in the pharmaceutical sector.

Dark Arts of Mathemical Deception

Professor Charlie Siefe of NYU, a mathematician debunks clinical trials, and few other items to where data is spun and fools you, every day example, hear about the perfect butt algorithm and more. These are probably some things you have never thought about but again after listening to what he has to say, it’s time to think about being skeptical. Here’s a radio show that also talks about the same topics.

This video digs in a bit further with how fictitious business models are used by banks and companies do this too. The models are so complex that CEOs don’t even understand them. “Quants, The Alchemists of Wall Street will take you through how “math models” work at banks and financial institutions in a way that even the layman can understand. More videos like over at theAlgo Duping/Killer Algorithm Page. Bank of America will also tell you“IT’ is a business” how they make money.

Weapons of Math Destruction

This is a lecture where Kathy O’Neill, a former Quant who worked for a Hedge Fund (Weapons of Math Destruction) on Wall Street will tell you what is done with your retirement money and more. The banks and companies use technology to take advantage because they can. “Of course we are going to take advantage because our tools are our brains…if they could figure out a way to take advantage of pension funds they would, a good interview with explaining smart money and dumb money.

Algorithms Shape The World

This is a very good presentation done a TED Conference and really was the one that got everyone started thinking about algorithms and today it’s talked about a lot. As he says “if you’re an algorithm, life is looking pretty good, but can’t say the same for humans”. What is a black box? Nobody has any control over the flash crash. We have moved forward a bit but still we are writing the unreadable and lost the sense of some of what is happening. Nice plug for Nanex here with research.